The Bastrop County Historical Society Museum
Special Tour Exhibit

Museum honors the Juarez Family
As communities grow, certain families tend to stand out for the roles they play in this evolution. Among those families making a profound contribution to 20th century Bastrop is the Juarez family, the subject of a special exhibit at the Museum during the 2009 Holiday Homes Tour.

The family's history is not unlike that of many families of Mexican descent who came to Texas in the late 1800s and early 1900s to escape political turmoil in Mexico and to build a life in Texas. This is the story of Victorino Juarez, of Mexican descent, and his wife, Lucille, of German and Spanish descent. Settling in Garfield, Texas, Victorino and Lucille had three children—Macario (1893), Petrolino (c. 1896), and Bonificia (c. 1897). The children were orphaned in early 1906 upon the death of their parents, possibly of an epidemic. In August of that year, a Bastrop court named Jesús Varra and his wife wards of the three children.

Macario ("Mike" as he was often called) subsequently was taken in by one of Bastrop's leading physicians, Dr. H.B. Combs, and his wife Dorothy Maude Combs. Mike, then in his mid-teens, worked on the family's farm on Wilson Street. From this beginning grew a close relationship between the Juarez and Combs families that would endure for decades and inform the lives of both families.

At 17, Mike fell in love with 13-year-old Encarnation (Connie) Morales who had immigrated from Zacatecas, Mexico with her parents Joe and Bentura Morales in 1905. After Mike and Connie married on December 2, 1913, Connie worked in the Combs' home at 1208 Church Street, cooking and cleaning and helping Mike maintain the property.

Both they and, over time, their 12 children—beginning with Lucille Juarez, born on March 29, 1915 and ending with Henry Juarez, born on August 4, 1937—were taken under the wings of Dr. and Mrs. Combs, who had no children of their own. Dr. Combs was the attending physician at the birth of each of Mike and Connie's children, naming most of them after his own and Maude's family members and one, Dan Moody Juarez, after the governor of Texas. As a result, other Juarez children bore such unique given names: Bell Chambers, Dorothy Maude, Frances, Henry, Nora, Leroy, and Gladys.

As the family grew, Dr. Combs encouraged Mike to move into town from the Steiner Ranch area, north of the city, so that their children could go to a local school for Mexican-Americans. In 1923, Dr. Combs' advocacy on behalf of the Juarez family led him to ask the Bastrop Independent School District Board of Trustees to admit Lucille, then about eight years old, to the white school. The board denied the request, according to district records.

[While some schools Mexican-American students had been established within the county, learning opportunities for Mexican-American students within the city of Bastrop were limited. The Primera Iglesia Bautista (Primera Baptist Church and a site on this year's tour) established a school for Mexican-American children in 1913. The school operated into the early 1930s when the church approached the Bastrop Independent School District about folding the church's school into a new, nonsectarian school for Mexican-American children. The district agreed and subsequently constructed a new facility—to be known as Mina Ward School*—on the east side of Main Street, just north of the railroad tracks. The school served Mexican-American children—including Mike and Connie's youngest children—in a segregated environment until 1948 when Judge Ben H. Rice of the U.S. District Court (Western District of Texas) ordered, in Delgado vs. Bastrop ISD, an end to the separate system of education for Mexican-American children.]

For a while the Juarez family lived on Fayette Street and, later, on Hill Street before settling in the 1200 block of Wilson Street, on land deeded to Mike by Dr. Combs in the 1920s for the sum of $1. This land was part of a larger tract owned by the Combs family on either side of Wilson Street and running west to Willow Street. As a wedding present, Dr. Combs gave each of Mike's children who chose to remain in Bastrop—Lucille, Gladys, Bell Chambers, Victor, and Leroy—a piece of this property to settle on. Over time, the family compound came to be known affectionately among family members as the "Juarez barrio". Today, only one member of the family, Mrs. Victor (Velia) Juarez, continues to reside there while other descendents of Mike and Connie have dispersed across the community and figure prominently in virtually every walk of Bastrop life. The remarkable legacy includes not only a new generation of people carrying the Juarez surname but also members of the Arroyo, Barron, Brown, Gutzler, Bulak, Cervantes, Coy, Cruz, Flores, Galvan, Gonzales, Gutierrez, Medina, Nino, Reyes, Sanchez, Sosa, Vasquez, Vera, and Villarreal families.

The Juarez history traces Bastrop's history over a century to the present and transects Bastrop's business, education, religious and medical history. Two sites on the 2009 Holiday Homes Tour—the Combs House and the Primera Baptist Church—are each key reference points in that history and this special exhibit.

* The name Mina derives from Bastrop's brief designation as Mina—in tribute to Javier Mina (1789-1818), one of the leaders of Mexico's War of Independence from Spain—and lives on today in the name of the Bastrop ISD elementary school at Hill and Farm Streets.